Luck smiled on young World War II pilot Melvin Bryant

Melvin Bryant talks about his time as a POW after he was bailed out of his P-51 Mustang over Germany. His best memory was seeing the Statue of Liberty when he returned home on a hospital ship.

DEVON RAVINE / Daily News

By WENDY VICTORA / Daily News

Published: Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 02:09 PM.

SHALIMAR — Melvin Bryant reaches back over 70 years effortlessly, reciting details dating back to the last years of World War II and everything in between.

The 88-year-old Poquito Bayou man can tell you the names of the towns in Germany he was marched through, the background of his interrogators and the first meal he was given after he was shot down: a bowl of chicken soup.

He doesn’t cry when he talks about being a young prisoner of war, of having a gun pressed to his head by angry German townspeople or of being paralyzed while bailing out of his P-51 Mustang.

The tears start to flow only when he recalls the New York City skyline coming into view from the deck of his hospital ship.

“When we saw New York and saw the Statue of Liberty, you never saw so many grown men … ” He stops to collect himself. “It was really a tear-jerker.”

At the time, Bryant was only 20 years old.

He already had flown 37 missions as a fighter pilot, been shot down near Stuttgart, Germany, and spent two months as a prisoner of war.

Bryant enlisted late in 1942, shortly after his 18th birthday.

He laughs remembering how he originally had been entranced by the mounted troops he saw at a base near his home in Kansas. When the “beautiful horses” were replaced by tanks, his interest in the military waned. But the planes that started appearing on recruiting posters caught his attention again and he signed up.

“College just sort of flitted away,” said Bryant, who went on to fly combat missions in Korea and Vietnam. “Flying and the military sort of took over.”

He would spend more than 30 years in the military, retiring as a colonel in 1975 after a two-year stint as commander at Hurlburt Field.

The young pilot was first trained on the P-47 Thunderbolt. From there, he was sent overseas with the 2nd Fighter Squadron, where he flew P-51 Mustangs from a dirt airstrip.

Bryant was shot down Feb. 22, 1945, after blowing up the locomotive of a train loaded with tanks that was winding its way along the foothills of the Alps. Bryan had turned his plane around to take aim when he was hit.

“We lost a lot of people that day doing what I was doing,” he said.

“Of course,” he added, grinning at the memory, “it was a pretty sight to see that locomotive explode. I got it, but it got me.”

The normal bailout procedure for the Mustang was to turn the plane over and bail out from the bottom, but he didn’t have enough altitude for that maneuver.

His only option was to try to climb out of the cockpit and jump over the side. But the gun he wore holstered to his side hit the horizontal stabilizer as he jumped. That blow left him paralyzed for several days.

“I couldn’t walk,” he said. “I had enough sense to pull the ripcord. My chute opened up and I hit the trees, about simultaneously.”

He released himself from the chute, but found himself on the ground and unable to walk.

A couple of old woodsmen who he described as very friendly came along and carried him to the nearest village.

There he was greeted by an angry crowd led by the town’s burgomaster, or informal mayor. The crowd kicked him and beat him with their hands, rifle butts and clubs.

He can still remember the cold metal of the burgomaster’s pistol pressed to his temple.

“A German army corporal got them off of me,” he recalls. “Put me on his truck.”

From there, he went to regional headquarters and then to a church, where he asked for a doctor and got a bowl of chicken soup.

Over the next two months, he was moved frequently and met many people who spoke English. One was a little girl who practiced her language skills on the young pilot —who was still bloody from his beating — while her parents and others dined in the next room.

He spent about a week in solitary confinement, was interrogated several times and learned that the Germans ultimately knew almost everything without him saying a word.

“Their intelligence program exceeded ours,” he said. “He told me all about myself, including where I went to high school.”

Bryant was forced to march for 17 days, and by the time his camp was liberated April 29, 1945, his weight had dropped to 110 pounds.

He remembers hearing and seeing Gen. George Patton’s armored division rolling up over the hill toward the camp.

He and other Army Air Corps men, having had little experience with tanks, came out to watch the approach. Infantrymen, on the other hand, took cover inside the camp and hid under bunks.

One of the tanks blew the steeple off a nearby church as the men watched.

“German SS made the guards and themselves fight for the camp,” he said. “The front lines moved through us.”

Less than a month later, he was on his way back to the United States.

His father had only recently learned that Bryant’s plane had been shot down and that his son was listed as missing in action.

“Because my wingman didn’t see my chute open — it opened and I hit the trees — they didn’t know I’d survived,” Bryant said.

After docking in New York, the returning soldiers were put on a train headed across the country. Its sole purpose was to bring them home as soon as possible.

He recalls rolling into Cleveland and seeing Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on the train station platform.

In Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the closest stop to his hometown, Bryant got off and caught a bus to Manhattan.

About 4 o’clock in the afternoon on June 2, 1945, he walked into the grocery store his father owned and fell into the older man’s arms.

“I said, 'Hhappy birthday, I’m home,' ” he recalled. “It was a lot of tears and that sort of thing.”

There had been times when he wondered if he’d ever see his family again, he said. Rumors would fly through the camp that the prisoners would all be executed or marched into the Alps and left to die.

SHALIMAR — Melvin Bryant reaches back over 70 years effortlessly, reciting details dating back to the last years of World War II and everything in between.

The 88-year-old Poquito Bayou man can tell you the names of the towns in Germany he was marched through, the background of his interrogators and the first meal he was given after he was shot down: a bowl of chicken soup.

He doesn’t cry when he talks about being a young prisoner of war, of having a gun pressed to his head by angry German townspeople or of being paralyzed while bailing out of his P-51 Mustang.

The tears start to flow only when he recalls the New York City skyline coming into view from the deck of his hospital ship.

“When we saw New York and saw the Statue of Liberty, you never saw so many grown men … ” He stops to collect himself. “It was really a tear-jerker.”

At the time, Bryant was only 20 years old.

He already had flown 37 missions as a fighter pilot, been shot down near Stuttgart, Germany, and spent two months as a prisoner of war.

Bryant enlisted late in 1942, shortly after his 18th birthday.

He laughs remembering how he originally had been entranced by the mounted troops he saw at a base near his home in Kansas. When the “beautiful horses” were replaced by tanks, his interest in the military waned. But the planes that started appearing on recruiting posters caught his attention again and he signed up.

“College just sort of flitted away,” said Bryant, who went on to fly combat missions in Korea and Vietnam. “Flying and the military sort of took over.”

He would spend more than 30 years in the military, retiring as a colonel in 1975 after a two-year stint as commander at Hurlburt Field.

The young pilot was first trained on the P-47 Thunderbolt. From there, he was sent overseas with the 2nd Fighter Squadron, where he flew P-51 Mustangs from a dirt airstrip.

Bryant was shot down Feb. 22, 1945, after blowing up the locomotive of a train loaded with tanks that was winding its way along the foothills of the Alps. Bryan had turned his plane around to take aim when he was hit.

“We lost a lot of people that day doing what I was doing,” he said.

“Of course,” he added, grinning at the memory, “it was a pretty sight to see that locomotive explode. I got it, but it got me.”

The normal bailout procedure for the Mustang was to turn the plane over and bail out from the bottom, but he didn’t have enough altitude for that maneuver.

His only option was to try to climb out of the cockpit and jump over the side. But the gun he wore holstered to his side hit the horizontal stabilizer as he jumped. That blow left him paralyzed for several days.

“I couldn’t walk,” he said. “I had enough sense to pull the ripcord. My chute opened up and I hit the trees, about simultaneously.”

He released himself from the chute, but found himself on the ground and unable to walk.

A couple of old woodsmen who he described as very friendly came along and carried him to the nearest village.

There he was greeted by an angry crowd led by the town’s burgomaster, or informal mayor. The crowd kicked him and beat him with their hands, rifle butts and clubs.

He can still remember the cold metal of the burgomaster’s pistol pressed to his temple.

“A German army corporal got them off of me,” he recalls. “Put me on his truck.”

From there, he went to regional headquarters and then to a church, where he asked for a doctor and got a bowl of chicken soup.

Over the next two months, he was moved frequently and met many people who spoke English. One was a little girl who practiced her language skills on the young pilot —who was still bloody from his beating — while her parents and others dined in the next room.

He spent about a week in solitary confinement, was interrogated several times and learned that the Germans ultimately knew almost everything without him saying a word.

“Their intelligence program exceeded ours,” he said. “He told me all about myself, including where I went to high school.”

Bryant was forced to march for 17 days, and by the time his camp was liberated April 29, 1945, his weight had dropped to 110 pounds.

He remembers hearing and seeing Gen. George Patton’s armored division rolling up over the hill toward the camp.

He and other Army Air Corps men, having had little experience with tanks, came out to watch the approach. Infantrymen, on the other hand, took cover inside the camp and hid under bunks.

One of the tanks blew the steeple off a nearby church as the men watched.

“German SS made the guards and themselves fight for the camp,” he said. “The front lines moved through us.”

Less than a month later, he was on his way back to the United States.

His father had only recently learned that Bryant’s plane had been shot down and that his son was listed as missing in action.

“Because my wingman didn’t see my chute open — it opened and I hit the trees — they didn’t know I’d survived,” Bryant said.

After docking in New York, the returning soldiers were put on a train headed across the country. Its sole purpose was to bring them home as soon as possible.

He recalls rolling into Cleveland and seeing Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on the train station platform.

In Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the closest stop to his hometown, Bryant got off and caught a bus to Manhattan.

About 4 o’clock in the afternoon on June 2, 1945, he walked into the grocery store his father owned and fell into the older man’s arms.

“I said, 'Hhappy birthday, I’m home,' ” he recalled. “It was a lot of tears and that sort of thing.”

There had been times when he wondered if he’d ever see his family again, he said. Rumors would fly through the camp that the prisoners would all be executed or marched into the Alps and left to die.